State & Education in England & Germany: A Sadlerian Perspective

To what extent is state intervention in education desirable or acceptable in England and Wales today? The issue has become a crucial one as Britain has entered the twenty-first century, heavily laden with economic and social problems as never before in her history. But this issue is by no means a new one. Indeed, throughout a long life it was a major preoccupation for Michael Sadler. For him the issues were intensified as a result of his pioneer work in the study of other systems of education. He had told a conference of English teachers in 1900 in Guildford: The practical value of studying, in a right spirit and with scholarly accuracy, the working of foreign systems of education is that it will result in our being better fitted to study and to understand our own . The comparative study of Germany and England, that is the theme of this book, affords a comprehensive example of this Sadler conviction which the author would be inclined to call lex sadleriana. The purpose of this study of State and Education in England and Germany is to trace and examine the background to Michael Sadler’s insights in Part One, and then in the anthology that follows in Part Two to listen to what Sadler himself had to say over a period stretching from 1900 to 1939 – a period that twice saw the breakdown of relationships between Germany and England, and twice posed the problem of subsequent reconstruction within a European framework. The anthology consists of Sadler’s lectures, speeches and writings dealing with the constraints of state control of education, reflecting as completely as possible everything he thought and said on the subject of this book. Each of these selections is introduced by a key extract which summarises the thought of the full document.